566 HISTORY OF GEOLOGY. 



duce, from the tenet of the tran smutability of the species of organized 

 beings, such a state of things as we see about us, and such a succession of 

 states as is evidenced by geological researches. And here, again, we are 

 brought to questions of which we must seek the answers from the most 

 profound physiologists. Now referring, as before, to those which 

 appear to be the best authorities, it is found that these additional posi- 

 tive laws are still more inadmissible than the primary assumption of 

 indefinite capacity of change. For example, in order to account, on 

 this hypothesis, for the seeming adaptation of the endowments of 

 animals to their wants, it is held that the endowments are the result of 

 the wants ; that the swiftness of the antelope, the claws and teeth of 

 the lion, the trunk of the elephant, the long neck of the giraffe have 

 been produced by a certain plastic character in the constitution of ani- 

 mals, operated upon, for a long course of ages, by the attempts which 

 these animals made to attain objects which their previous organization 

 did not place within their reach. In this way, it is maintained that the 

 most striking attributes of animals, those which apparently imply most 

 clearly the providing skill of their Creator, have been brought forth by 

 the long-repeated efforts of the creatures to attain the object of their 

 desire ; thus animals with the highest endowments have been gradually 

 developed from ancestral forms of the most limited organization : thus 

 fish, bird, and beast, have grown from small gelatinous bodies, "petits 

 corps gelatineux," possessing some obscure principle of life, and the ca- 

 pacity of development; and thus man himself with all his intellectual 

 and moral, as well as physical privileges, has been derived from some 

 creature of the ape or baboon tribe, urged by a constant tendency to 

 improve, or at least to alter his condition. 



As we have said, in order to arrive even hypothetically at this result, 

 it is necessary to assume besides a mere capacity for change, other 

 positive and active principles, some of which we may notice. Thus, 

 we must have as the direct productions of nature on this hypothesis, 

 certain monads or rough draughts, the primary rudiments of plants 

 and animals. We must have, in these, a constant tendency to progres- 

 sive improvement, to the attainment of higher powers and faculties 

 than they possess ; which tendency is again perpetually modified and 

 controlled by the force of external circumstances. And in order to 

 account for the simultaneous existence of animals in every stage of 

 this imaginary progress, we must suppose that nature is compelled to 

 be constantly producing those elementary beings, from which all 

 animals are successively developed. 



